The University Magazine

Legends of the lens

Pete Turner ’56: Living color

Pete Turner’s past caught up with him recently.

“It’s crazy,” says Turner ’56 (photography). “I discovered a
treasure trove of work I had done when I was in the Army.”

Back in 1957-58, the young draftee was assigned to the
Army Pictorial Lab in Long Island City, N.Y., where he was
given the run of a “pristine, huge, beautiful lab” and unlimited
supplies for making the new Type C color prints.

Turner took full advantage of the facilities as well as the
proximity to New York City, shooting everything that captured
his imagination. Also about that time, on the recommendation
of his former RIT professor, Robert Bagby, Turner
connected with the Freelance Photographers Guild.

Getty Images recently acquired the Freelance Photographers
Guild collection and returned original negatives to
their creators. “I got this mint set of pictures back,” says
Turner. He began scanning and digitally adjusting the old
images, many of which are now featured on his Web site
(www.peteturner.com) in a gallery titled Discoveries.

They are as vibrant and arresting as his photos from the
succeeding decades, distinctive work that carried Turner to
the top of his profession. Turner’s photos have appeared in
popular magazines including Holiday, Look, Esquire, Sports Illustrated
and National Geographic. He provided cover images for
more than 80 LP record albums by John Coltrane, Bill Evans,
George Benson, Quincy Jones, Paul Desmond, Stan Getz and
others. His advertising assignments included work for ESSO,
Goodyear, Timex and De Beers. He’s been the still photographer
on the sets of numerous movies, including Cleopatra
with Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor in 1962 and Steven Spielberg’s
Close Encounters of the Third Kind in 1978.

Turner’s photos have been featured in numerous shows at venues
including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and Rochester’s
George Eastman House and his work is included in the permanent
collections of museums worldwide. He has received more
than 300 awards from design and photography groups, including
the Professional Photographer of the Year Award from Photoimaging
Manufacturers and Distributors Association (PMDA). Several
books of his photos have been published, including African Journey
(Graphis, 2001), featuring works from trips over four decades, and
The Color of Jazz (Rizzoli, 2006), a collection of his album covers.

Bold, saturated – even unnatural – color has been Turner’s
hallmark from the very beginning. He’s never been afraid to push
the limits, fi rst in the darkroom and now with the latest digital
equipment.

Inspired by surrealist painters Yves Tanguy and Giorgio de
Chirico, Turner began exploring conceptual, abstract ideas from the
earliest days of his career. But even before his stint in the Army’s
Type C lab, Turner was attracted to color photography.

“At RIT, I was kind of an oddball guy because I liked color,” he
says. “I don’t know why, but I just loved color.”

Among many notable teachers in the School of Photography
at the time were Ralph Hattersley (“an idea factory”) and Minor
White (“We were all humbled by him”). Les Stroebel ’42 gave students
a solid technical background in black and white photography.

“I liked them all,” he says. Turner’s favorite was Robert Bagby,
who had been a successful commercial photographer in New York
City. “What I liked about Robert is that he kind of laughed at the
instruction manual. He let me experiment. He liked to go out and
shoot, and he’d invite me along. You can learn a lot by watching
your teachers actually work.”

He recalls his years at RIT as “a wonderful time,” but it almost
didn’t happen. Turner spent four years at Aquinas Institute in
Rochester with “a camera in my hands all the time,” but RIT rejected
him. “My grades were terrible,” he admits.

Turner took his case to C.B. Neblette, head of the School of
Photography. “He gave me a chance. Boy, was I excited because all
I wanted to do was photography. After that, my grades were never
a problem.”

He can’t imagine a different path. “With photography, you never
know what will happen. You never know where it will take you.”